Machines often need to communicate with other machines with little or no human intervention. In the past, such communications were made via wire. As time went on, wireless communications began to be used. With the increased availability of mobile broadband, machine type communications (MTC) via mobile broadband is becoming more and more popular. MTC enables communications between remote machines for the exchange of information and operating commands without the need for human intervention. Exemplary uses of machine-type communications include remote sensors, e-health, remote-controlled utility meters, surveillance cameras, toll payments, production chain automation, and the like. For example, a device can monitor the operation status of another device and report the statuses to a central server; a device can read a utility meter and provide the data to a billing department for the preparation of monthly utility bills; or a device in a car can sense that the car has passed a toll booth and transmit the information to the toll taking authority for billing purposes.
The amount of data being sent in MTC applications is typically smaller in size than the data present in human-initiated communication. This small amount of data traffic is a common feature across many MTC applications. User equipment (UEs) that are used in an MTC configuration may spend most of their time in an idle state and need to wake up mainly to send or receive a small amount of data.